Dr Sarabajaya Kumar

Teaching Fellow in Voluntary Sector Policy

Introduction

Dr Sarabajaya Kumar
joined the UCL School of Public Policy in January 2010 as a Teaching Fellow in
Voluntary Sector Policy. She holds post graduate degrees - an MSc and PhD - in
Public Policy and Management from the University
of Aston, and a BA (Hons) in Sociology
and Religion from Goldsmiths’ College, University of London.

Sarabajaya was a Lecturer and Programme
Director of an MSc at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE) (2000-2007). During this time she also served as an advisor to the Home
Office as a member of the Governance Strategy Group - set up to advise and
oversee the development of an integrated Governance Strategy for the Third
Sector - and was the series editor and editor for the LSE’s Centre for Civil Society
Voluntary Sector Working Paper Series - funded by the Charities Aid Foundation.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/publications/vswp/Voluntary_Sector_Working_Papers.htm.

Between 2007 and 2009
Sarabajaya held a Senior Research Fellowship at the Saïd Business
School’s Skoll Centre for
Social Entrepreneurship. She is currently an Associate Fellow of the Institute
for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford, where she is
researching ‘Social Capital in UK Public Policy’ for the ‘Social Capital and Competitiveness: New
Perspectives Project’ and is an active member of the Governance,
Accountability and Innovation (GAIn) network. http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/insis/research/Pages/gain.aspx.

Sarabajaya’s research
interests are: Accountability, Participation, Social Capital, Social Exclusion,
Governance, State -Third Sector Relations, Public-Private Partnerships, Third
Sector Organisations, Organisational Theory, Qualitative Research Methodology,
Action Research and Grounded Theory. Her doctoral research considered
inter-organisational accountability relationships between government, the
voluntary sector and users of contracted out health and welfare services.

Prior to
academe, Sarabajaya worked as a volunteer co-worker with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and with lay
health workers in West Bengal, India. She was also the founder worker for a
community organisation working with the Spitalfield’s community on public
health issues in the East End of London, and responsible for partnership
working between the charitable voluntary sector, local government and the NHS in
the London Borough of Haringey.